Today, the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI), the largest membership organization for not-for-profit hospices in the United States, announced the appointment of Dr. Larry Atkins as Chief Policy Officer.
“Larry’s uniquely rich experience is going to be key as we enter this new phase of our work,” said Tom Koutsoumpas, CEO of NPHI. “With numerous legislative efforts maturing, we’re going to be better positioned than ever to ensure our member programs are empowered to continue serving more than 130,000 people every day.”
Dr. Atkins will work on behalf of NPHI’s mission-driven community-based hospice programs to advance numerous policy priorities nationwide, including supporting the CMMI Value-Based Insurance Design (V-BID) model’s hospice benefit component, reforming audit and enforcement mechanisms to redistribute the burden of reviews away from providers who consistently meet standards, enabling hospice and palliative care providers to ensure smooth transitions of care for “upstream” patient populations, and, more broadly, modernizing the Medicare hospice benefit to reflect clinical realities of a larger and more diverse patient population.
“I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Dr. Atkins to the team,” said Samira Beckwith, Chair of NPHI’s Board of Directors and President and CEO of Hope Healthcare. “His expertise will be instrumental in deepening our work with NPHI programs nationwide.”
Dr. Atkins brings more than 30 years of experience in health and social policy analysis, policy development, and legislative representation to NPHI. He previously served as the Executive Director of the Long-Term Quality Alliance and the National MLTSS Health Plan Association and is a Board member and former President of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He was also Staff Director of the federal Commission on Long-Term Care and served as Executive Director of U.S. Public Policy at Merck. In the 1990s, Dr. Atkins served on two quadrennial Social Security Advisory Commissions.
Prior to that, Dr. Atkins served on the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging as professional staff, Deputy Staff Director and Republican Staff Director for Chairman John Heinz (R-PA). He also advised Senator Heinz as a member of the Senate Finance Committee on retirement income and health policy matters and as a member of the 1983 National Commission on Social Security Reform. Prior to his work in Congress, Dr. Atkins developed health and human services policy at state and local government levels.
“I’m honored to be joining NPHI at this critical juncture,” said Dr. Atkins. “I look forward to working with our members to ensure that every individual has access to high-quality palliative, advanced, and end-of-life care that reflects their personal needs.”
Learn more about NPHI here.
Press contact:
Allan Malievsky
Communications Director
Amalievsky@hospiceinnovations.org
About the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI): Serving over 120,000 patients daily and employing thousands of medical professionals, NPHI is driven by passion and integrity to help people live fully through the end‐of‐life. Our commitment is to ensure patients and their families experience advanced illness and end‐of‐life care consistent with their goals, values, and preferences. Our not‐for‐profit member programs across 32 states and the District of Columbia seek to accomplish this by facilitating innovative design of more effective and comprehensive models of care, advocating for comprehensive community‐integrated care that is customized to meet each individual patient’s needs, and enabling collaboration between national thought leaders, decisionmakers, and health care stakeholders to strengthen hospice care. www.NPHI.info